Next Phase

I had a wonderful break last week in Port au Prince at Haiti Children’s Rescue Mission, an orphanage in Petionville. It might sound a little strange to describe 3 days at an orphanage as a break, but having nothing to do but some grocery shopping and playing with kids was a wonderful reprieve from my normal daily responsibilities. I got into town on Tuesday, June 3 to find out that it was a good thing we had chosen that day because there was a city-wide demonstration planned for Wednesday that would essentially grind things to a halt for the day. I was told that the demonstrations were to push for the death sentence for kidnappers, as kidnapping has continued to be a big problem in Haiti. I found myself trying not to think about the high crime rate a couple days later when I was brought into a bad part of town to buy some meds to bring back up the mountain. Fortunately, I didn’t realize just how bad the area was until after we had gotten back into the car and the driver, native to Port au Prince, said, “Yeah, this neighborhood is not so good. I always avoid it, this is my first time here in 5 years. Just right now before you got into the car, I saw a lady being robbed from the back of a tap-tap. She looked really frightened.” Apparently, God had his protective hand on us that day!

My cousin Chip arrived in the country on Friday and we flew to Cayes where we’ve been doing a VBS at a small orphanage there. Chip is incredibly gifted with working with the children. I’ve been so impressed with his adventurous spirit and am grateful for his flexibility. On Sunday we got to join a missionary family as well as some local Haitian youth for an outreach that they’ve been doing every week for a few months. They go out to a slum of Cayes and do Sunday school and pass out meals for about 500 kids there. It was great to be a part of things that day. Of course, wherever I go, medical emergencies seem to follow me, so we ended up bringing a little boy back to town to go to the hospital for stitches after slicing his foot open.